Every paper published by a researcher at Swansea University needs to be made open access according to the terms of the University and REF open access policies. Funders may also have open access policies: check these at http://sherpa.ac.uk/juliet

Authors are responsible for making sure their papers comply with all applicable open access policies

How to comply with the REF & university Open Access policy

Act at Acceptance

Create a record on RIS with the details you know: title, journal, the date of acceptance, DOI (if available).
Upload the accepted version of the paper: this is usually a plain version with no publisher formatting (not a proof). Save a Word doc as a PDF.
Publisher versions cannot usually be used unless you paid to publish with “gold" open access and/or the paper has a Creative Commons licence.

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Complete at Publication

Add bibliographic details and "publish to Cronfa", applying any embargo period required by the publisher. Check these here: http://sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/
Embargo periods run from the date of first online publication.
We can complete this step for you (see "Help" below).

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Reasons papers fail to comply

Failing to upload your paper in time
The REF policy allows three months from acceptance to upload the file into RIS (it does not have to be visible on Cronfa at this point).

Uploading the wrong version
Publishers usually insist that an unformatted version be uploaded.
The accepted manuscript (or post-print) contains the final text with any changes made after peer review.

Journal policy
The publisher may not permit any version to be open access or has an embargo longer than the maximum allowed (12-24mo).
Check journal policy before submission.

Help & funds for gold open access

The Library Research Support team is checking items added to RIS, chasing authors to comply & completing details at publication where we can.
Contact us [email protected] with any queries about your paper.

You should not need to pay for open access but if you do: We administer a fund to pay APCs for UKRI funded research. We have free gold open access via the Springer Compact deal for SU corresponding authors.

Don’t let publisher paywalls block potential readers! Promote the open version of your paper on Cronfa: via social media, in your email signature, at a conference…open access can lead to more citations and impact.